If only our eyes saw souls instead of bodies, how different our ideals of beauty would be.

We all have an image in our heads of what we look like.

How much energy are you giving to the image you have of yourself? More importantly....is it working for you?

For someone with an eating disorder, your image may be colored by ideas about what you ‘should’ look like, and the concept that your worth as a person is in direct proportion to the size of your body.

Can you image saying to a five year old, ‘your legs don’t look how they are meant to look’ or, ‘people will hold you in higher esteem if you hold your stomach in’...?

Put like this, it seems absurd. The truth is, people are telling themselves every single day that their bodies are not ‘right’ that they look ‘disgusting’ or they just plain don’t like the skin they were born in.

If you have an eating disorder, you don’t get to trust your eyes and you don’t get to trust that what you see in the mirror is reality.

If you can’t use a mirror to assess your image, what can you use?

Something that helped me in my recovery was I would use other people as my reflection. When I smiled at them...they smiled back. They didn’t care about my body - they cared about my heart. When I helped someone out and they said, ‘thank you’ I knew they were connecting with my soul.

In my eating disorder no-one ever said to me, ‘thank you for bringing your perfect body into my presence.’
They more often said things like, ‘you look sick’, ‘there is no light in your eyes’ and ‘you aren’t fun to be around anymore’.

The illusion of an eating disorder is that your body is the problem. The problem is not your body. The problem is the thoughts you have about your body.

Change your thinking and you will literally change your body-image...the image you hold of yourself.

My body is not me. It is part of me, but it does not define my worth. I have fat on my body but I do not define myself as ‘fat’. I have fingernails on my body but I do not define myself as ‘fingernails’.

An eating disorder takes everything away. It strips you of your self worth until all you have left to hang onto is your body.
In recovery, you get to let go...and in letting go, you set yourself free.

There is an important difference between giving up and letting go. In recovery, you let go of your eating disorder so you can make room for something new.

Contact Us:

Email info@recoveredliving.com

Phone 1 (310) 486 6814

Mailing address:
1450 2nd St, Suite 298
Santa Monica CA
90401 USA

Disclaimer:

Recovered Living offers specialized eating disorder recovery coaching services, to complement outpatient eating disorder treatment. In order to take part in our services, clients with diagnosed eating disorders are required to be under the care of at least a therapist and to have a meal plan in place. We do not provide psychotherapy or nutritional advice.